Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)

I have a very genuine concern about this, which I have shared with the Minister. In instances where an organisation is wholly funded, employers have told me they do not have the money to pay into it from next year. It strikes me that what is going to happen is exactly what happened when the Government previously cut the funding for these organisations. The message given to them by the Government was that they were not being instructed to cut wages and they should not reduce services. However, they were not given enough money to pay their bills and manage. In the end, all those things happened. Wages were cut and services were reduced. It is not my position the impact is going to be the same but the impact will be that people will not get their pensions. They have a lawful entitlement to access the scheme but what if the employer is not given enough money and guidance in cases where these organisations are solely funded by the State? What was done during the economic crash was grossly unfair. Organisations that were doing their very best at the exact time we needed them were put to the pin of their collar and told by the Government not to cut wages and, whatever they did, not to cut services and, by the way, the Government was cutting their funding. They were left on their own. It happened in dribs and drabs. Some of it ended up in the Labour Court. More of it ended up with chief executives and workers' representatives sitting in rooms trying to figure out how to get through it.

I do not want something like that to happen again. That was the purpose of this amendment. I respect the Minister acknowledged it is potentially an issue. It is not an issue with his Department necessarily, but it is an issue with other Departments. I go back to my earlier point, which is that when everybody is responsible nobody is responsible, sometimes. I welcome that the Minister will take a lead on this. I would like to be a little more comforted that this is going to be addressed and will not end up as an issue because people who may wish to join will miss out if the money is not there for it to be matched up.